08 May, 2016

Varoufakis: IT technologies will overthrow Capitalism

The former
Greek Minister of Finance, Yanis Varoufakis, ended his recent speech
on the Future of Capitalism, at the New School, New York, with some
interesting remarks.

As he said:

The world we
live in, is increasingly rudderless, in a constant slow burning
recession, while at the very same time, the increasing concentration
in the IT sector is creating the new technologies that will do that
which the Left has failed to do: overthrow Capitalism. It is really
very simple.

The moment
machines pass the Turing test
properly, and you pick up the phone and you do not know whether the
person you are talking to is a human being or a machine˙the moment we are going to have 3D printers operating as
public utilities - you can send any blueprint to it and it can print
from one pin to a motorcycle, or to a car - the moment that this
happens, we have not just a process of Schumpeterian creative
destruction, but we have a process where economies of scale and the
whole logic of corporate Capitalism collapses.

And at that
point we have a major rapture that the political system which has
been completely depleted of any semblance of Democracy, will not be
able to regulate. At that point, humanity will be facing a juncture:
will either move to a Star Trek-like Utopia, where technology becomes
our slave and we manage to utilize its wealth creating capacity for
the purpose of the common good, which will be democratically
determined and not technologically, or, we are going to move towards
a Matrix-like Dystopia where humans, independently on whether are the
owners of these magnificent machines or the masses who are miserable
and completely cut off productive society, will all become servants
to the machines.

The choice
will depend on Democratic politics. The choice is everyone's.

*****

The ruthless
elites are now breaking the social contract due to hyper-automation. They own the
corrupted politicians and are using them to deregulate the system
completely, according to their interests. The Greek experiment could
be used as a model for this process.

One
dangerous illusion of the elites is that they can go away, as always
in the past, in case of a massive, ugly collapse. But, if there will
be any Revolution in the 21st century soon, it will be done by those
who became statistical figures of poverty, unemployment, inequality
and social exclusion by this brutal system. People with no hopes and
dreams, no better future to seek, no class consciousness. People who
have nothing to lose. It will be bad, chaotic, unpredictable and
rather doubtful that someone could call it "Revolution".

Their other
dangerous illusion, is that they think they can escape from what actually Varoufakis implies here, that in
a completely deregulated system, where the political power will be
vanished and all the processes will be determined exclusively by the
power of technology, even the elites will eventually end to obey the
extremely advanced, hyper-automated machines. This is the road to the
Matrix Dystopia for everyone.

We can only
hope that things will end differently towards the "Star Trek
Utopia" that Varoufakis describes. As mentioned in previous article: “The thirst for
more power and profit may drive the biggest companies into a new
cycle of fierce competition. Furthermore, it may not be that easy for
them to keep the monopoly of technology too long. Eventually the
technology of hyper-automated machines will escape from the
monopolies, and a new sequence of small-medium businesses will become
active in the field. Soon, we could see a similar scenario to that of
the computers and the internet. However, in this case the impact to
the societies will be much more profound. If hyper-automated machines
become more and more cheap and accessible to millions of households,
it could seriously boost the quality of life for millions of people
into unprecedented levels.”

However,
the odds are totally against this perspective, exactly because the
elites are using their increasingly concentrated power to pull
societies away from it. We all need to fight in order to change this
balance. We need to bring back the political process at the center of
all critical decisions which will determine our future. To use the
technology for the benefit of all. Otherwise, 'The
development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of
the human race.', as Stephen
Hawking, among other scientists, already warned.

3 comments:

World is not ruderless people get the goverment they deserve. How many of americans yelled yeah yeah while bombs payed by them were killing inocent children!! now who cares if their backs break if they approved wars with their money don't they deserve to be poor?

Even the greediest eventually has his fill. Capitalism is ending because we are automating work and trivializing access to whatever goods or services such work could be exchanged for. And this is hardly bad news Mehrdad - we may finally be rid of a primeval trade of apples for oranges.